Thangam Debbonaire: I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification. I understand from an intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West that the reason why we were not allowed to remove the words “on a commercial basis” was that they were deemed out of scope. As I understand it, the word “economy”, if we stick to the letter of it, includes transactions for which there is no financial payment. There are transactions involved, and the word “digital” is in the title of the Bill, so I think it unfortunate that the amendment was not agreed to. Taking out the words “on a commercial basis” would have done a great deal to make consistent across all platforms and all forms of pornographic content available online the restrictions that we are placing on commercial ones.
I support the amendments proposed by my hon. Friend to the wording of clause 15(5)(a) and (6), for reasons that have already been given, and I want to add to the arguments. Hon. Friends and Members may have read the evidence from Girlguiding. As a former Guide, I pay tribute to the movement for the excellent work that it has done. It has contributed a profound and well-evidenced understanding of what young women are saying about online pornography. I will pick out a couple of statistics, because they make arguments to which I will refer in interventions on later clauses. That will make my speeches less long.
In the 2016 girls’ attitudes survey, half of the girls said that sexism is worse online than offline. In the 2014 survey, 66%, or two thirds, of young women said that they often or sometimes see or experience sexism online. It is a place where young women routinely experience sexism, and part of that sexism is the ubiquity of pornography. In 2015, the survey found that 60% of girls aged 11 to 21 see boys their age—admittedly, some  of those are over the age of 18, but they are still the girls’ peers—viewing pornography on mobile devices or tablets. In contrast, only 27% of girls say that they see girls their age viewing pornography. The majority of those young women say from their experience that children can access too much content online and that it should be for adults only. In the survey, we see a certain degree of concord among young women in the Girlguiding movement, Opposition Members and the Government manifesto, which pledged, as my hon. Friend said, to exclude children from all forms of online pornography.
The 2015 Girlguiding survey also found that those young women felt that pornography was encouraging sexist stereotyping and harmful views, and that the proliferation of pornography is having a negative effect on women in society more generally. Those young women are the next generation of adults.
I have worked with young men who have already abused their partners. In my former job working with domestic violence perpetrators, I worked with young men of all ages; for the men my age, their pornography had come from the top shelf of a newsagent, but the younger men knew about forms of pornography that those of us of a certain age had no understanding of whatever. They were using pornography in ways that directly contribute to the abuse of women and girls, including pornography that is filmed abuse. I shall come back to that point later, but we need to recognise that young men are getting their messages about what sex and intimacy are from online pornography. If we do not protect them from online pornography under the age of 18, we are basically saying that there are no holds barred.
The hon. Member for Devizes and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley mentioned loopholes. When we leave loopholes, it creates a colander or sieve for regulation. Yes, the internet is evolving and, yes, we in this Committee Room probably do not know every single way in which it already provides pornography, and certainly not how it will in future, but that is a good reason to provide a strong regulatory framework when we have the chance. We have that chance now, and we should take it. If it remains the case that removing the words “on a commercial basis” is deemed outside our scope, which I find very sad—I think it is a missed opportunity, and I hope the House can return to it at some point and regulate the free content—we must definitely ensure that we are putting everything else that we possibly can on a level playing field. That means that the regulation of video on demand has to be consistent and that we have to close any other loophole we can spot over the next few days.
I hope Opposition amendments will make the Government think about the manifesto commitment they rightly made—I am happy to put on record that I support it—and take the opportunity to stick to it. Young women want that; young men need it, because my experience of working with young men who have abused their partners and ex-partners is that they felt that they were getting those messages from pornography; and we as a society cannot afford to ignore this problem any longer. We have a chance to do something about it, so let us take that opportunity.

Thangam Debbonaire: I must have it clearly on record that I supported that commitment only: not the whole Conservative manifesto, just the bit that says “We want to protect all children from all online pornography.”

Louise Haigh: Our amendments are designed to enable the regulator to ask the internet service provider to block offending sites. This goes back to the point we made earlier on the differences between sites operated “on a commercial basis” and social media sites and ancillary sites. The proposals as they stand do not give the regulator sufficient powers to enforce the mechanisms proposed in the Bill.
Broadening the definition of ancillary service provider specifically to include internet service providers would require the regulator to notify them of non-compliant sites. That will put ISPs in the same bracket as payment service providers, which will be required to withdraw their services if other measures have been exhausted. In the case of ISPs, they would be required to block offending sites.
The amendments would create a simple backstop power where enforcement through the Government’s proposals had not achieved its intended objective and commercial providers had not withdrawn their services, either because the fine does not act as a deterrent or because, due to their international status, they do not need to comply. If pornography providers continued to provide content without age verification restrictions, the regulator would then have the power to require ISPs to take down the content.
We believe that, without amendment, the proposals will not achieve the Bill’s aim, as non-compliant pornographers would not be absolutely assured of payment services being blocked. First, the proposals do not send anywhere near a strong enough signal to the porn industry that the Government are serious about the proposals and their enforcement. Giving the regulator the power but not the stick suggests that we are not all that bothered about whether sites comply. Secondly, we can have no reassurance that sites will be shut down within any kind of timeframe if there is non-compliance. As drafted in the explanatory notes, “on an ongoing basis” could mean yearly, biannually or monthly, but it makes a mockery of the proposals if sites could be non-compliant for two years or more before payment services may or may not act. That does not provide much of an incentive to the industry to act.
Throughout the evidence sessions we heard that there are significant difficulties with the workability of this entire part of the Bill. For instance, many sites will hide their contact details, and a substantial number will  simply not respond to financial penalties. Indeed, an ability already exists in law for ISPs to be compelled to block images that portray, for example, child sex abuse. There is also an ability to block in the case of copyright infringement. It therefore seems eminently reasonable that in the event of non-compliance, the regulator has a clear backstop power. We believe that even just legislating for such a power will help speed up enforcement. If providers know that they cannot simply circumvent the law by refusing to comply with notices, they will comply more efficiently. That will surely help the age verifier to pass the real-world test, which is integral to the Bill’s objectives.
Similarly, new clause 11 provides for an all-important speed of enforcement. As it currently stands, the Bill provides fairly feeble powers to an enforcer to give notice to a payment service or ancillary service provider that a site has contravened clause 15(1). Indeed, giving evidence to the Committee, David Austin of the BBFC said of his power to notify sites of their contravention of clause 15 that
“some will and some, probably, will not”––[Official Report, Digital Economy Public Bill Committee, 11 October 2016; c. 41, Q91.]
comply.
He welcomed as a second backstop power the ability to notify the ancillary or payment service provider. If providers still fail to act after that second backstop power is invoked, the regulator’s final power is to issue a fine. That is clearly insufficient, and the process itself would take a great deal of time, during which children under 18 would still be able to access pornography, even though the age verification regulator was well aware that there was a breach of clause 15(1).
The amendment would provide the Secretary of State with the power, through regulations, to issue a blocking injunction preventing access to locations on the internet if a court is satisfied that they are being used to contravene clause 15. The Opposition are clear that the power would be necessary only when the other enforcement powers had proved ineffective. Indeed, in evidence the BBFC was clear that fines by themselves would not be enough. David Austin said:
“For UK-based websites and apps, that is fine, but it would be extremely challenging for any UK regulator to pursue foreign-based websites or apps through a foreign jurisdiction to uphold a UK law. So we suggested, in our submission of evidence to the consultation back in the spring, that ISP blocking ought to be part of the regulator’s arsenal. We think that that would be effective.”––[Official Report, Digital Economy Public Bill Committee, 11 October 2016; c. 41, Q91.]
The Government’s own age verification regulator recommends that the amendments be made to the Bill. We very much hope that the Government will consider accepting them.

Louise Haigh: That was not quite my question. How long does the Minister anticipate that ancillary service providers or payment service providers will take to act upon receiving notification from the BBFC that a site is non-compliant?

Chris Matheson: Yes. I raised this with the gentleman from the British Board of Film Classification, I believe, and I questioned his assertion about the top-50 websites. He said that the process would not stop there but proceed to the next 50, but if those 50 content providers are constantly moving all over the place, it will be rather like a game of whack-a-mole. Unless we have a sufficiently large mallet to give the mole a whack early on—[Interruption.] This is a serious business, and if I am sounding a bit jocular, that is not meant to take away from the serious issue. If we do not have the tools to address those who are deliberately not complying, and those who do not wish to comply with the regulations that we are putting in place to protect our children, I fear that we will be chasing after them too much.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley is right that there will also be the danger that investigative authorities use too many of their resources to go after this, when there are other things they need to go after as well. We need to put the tools at the disposal of the investigative and enforcement authorities, to give them the opportunity to make as clean an attack as possible on the providers that are not complying with the desire of this House.

Claire Perry: The hon. Lady rightly gets to the great concern that somehow, in doing something good, an awful lot of concern can be created, and I am sympathetic to her points. I remind her that it is not as if these sites do not know who is visiting them anyway. One of the  great conundrums on the internet is that every single keystroke we take is tracked and registered. Indeed, that is why shopping follows us around the internet after we have clicked on a particular site. Unless people are very clever with their private browsing history, the same is the case for commercial providers.
Although the hon. Lady is right to be concerned about the conflation of identity and data, there is absolutely no sense that this information is not already out there. It could be used for malicious purposes, should somebody so intend. I remind her that 86% of the public think that putting in place age verification measures is a good thing. I have always wanted to unleash this country’s technological brilliance in coming up with a system. When we were looking at how to ensure filters are correctly turned off and on by adults, because kids are often more tech-savvy than their parents—we heard about the tech-savvy seven-year old of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk—and to ensure filter management is done by an adult, we came up with a neat solution. A person has to be over 18 to enter into a contract to have the internet service; therefore, ensuring that emails are sent to the account holder is a way of restoring that loop. Of course, passwords can be shared among families, but really good attempts were made to try to work out who is over 18 in the household.
I am sure the hon. Lady agrees that we do not want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. These are all very important points to make. The BBFC is very experienced, and it ought to be able to design an age verification system that meets her concerns.

Thangam Debbonaire: I refer the Minister to the point made by the hon. Member for Devizes, who mentioned the murder of April Jones and the fact that her killer was able to type certain words into a search engine that I cannot bear to repeat. Search engines have the power to change their algorithm, we know they do.